The White Horse
by bhut
Summary: What if the end of X-Files S10 took place before the finale of AoS S2? When dealing with a new and startling plague, can the agents and the gifted save the world - and themselves? And what about Mulder and Scully.
1. Chapter 1

**The Rider on the White Horse**

 _Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners._

...As soon as the plane landed, Grant's feelings of things going wrong yet again intensified. Ever since he had accepted the offer of Coulson and Deathlok back in Mexico things just weren't going right for him or Kara, and now the feeling of wrongness, incorrectness, etc had just intensified. His specialist's intuition was acting up - in a bad way, and it was not just intuition, either. He had been feeling slightly off for a while in a physical self earlier, and that was actually quite concerning - high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agents got sick much more rarely than ordinary people did, in no part to all of the shots, vaccines and what-not that they recieved as part of their training; for Grant, (or May, or Coulson for that matter) to get sick meant something potentially much more severe than for an ordinary person...which was why when he entered the plane and saw Kara and Bobbi _not_ engaged in battle, but sitting there, equally miserably, and all but huddling against each other, he was not entirely surprised.

"I'm not entirely surprised," he confessed to Kara, as he gave her a thermometer (the one that went into the mouth, not some other body part). "I've felt something under the weather earlier this week too. Now just take your temperature, please - this is important."

"I'm feeling under the weather too," Bobbi grumbled, as she looked askance at the other ex-agent. "Are you going to ignore me instead?"

"It's tempting, but, what are you feeling?" Grant asked the blonde as he gave her a package of penicillin. "Fever, chills?"

Instead of replying in a more mundane fashion, Bobbi answered with a lot of wet coughing - nasty one, which shook her powerful frame...well, powerfully.

"Is she going to be ok?" Kara asked meekly. "Am I going to be ok?" She twitched as she did her best to control her own coughing fit - with mixed success.

Instead of replying in a reassuring way, Grant took a good look at her temperature (on the thermometer), then another good look at her and Bobbi and grew visibly thoughtful.

"We got a problem," he finaly reached a conclusion. "You two got a virus - a nasty one, I bet."

"Tell me about it," Bobbi snapped and paused, when Grant noticably didn't rise to the bait but began to deliberate something. "What are we missing?" she asked in a more reasonable tone, which broke of in another coughing fit. "We're going to die, aren't we?"

"Excuse me?" Kara twitched as she look at the other woman. "Whare you talking about? Grant is going to help us now-"

"Kara," Grant exhaled. "I don't do diseases very well. Wounds and the like are more to more knowledge - I try to cure you two I might kill you instead." He paused. "We need to go to my sister - my stepsister, if you want to get technical," he gave a look at Bobbi daring her to challenge this statement, before switching his attention back to Kara. "It'll be trickier than what we did before."

"But she can help us-?" Kara meekly reached out and touched Grant on the arm with her own limb.

"I hope so," Grant nodded simply. "And Kara? We're taking Bobbi with us, ok? I know that she hasn't apologized to you and all - yet, but this is important. This is S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra business important, ok?"

"Fine," Kara nodded, even as Grant strapped both her and Bobbi into the plane seats. "Once this is over though...no promises."

"Ok," Grant nodded, and the plane lifted off again.

"...Wait," Bobbi spoke after a brief while when it became obvious that so far neither Grant nor Kara were coming after her in any particular Hydra-like way. "This is it?"

"What did you expect? Us to torture you into apologizing?" Grant said flatly.

Bobbi fell silent.

Something was in the air, something very wrong - Skye was sure of that, since she was talking to Raina, who apparently could see the future for real (unlike John Garrett, cough), and who was claiming that something new in the way.

"Big brother is coming," she told Cal with a van smile as Skye walked in on them.

"Big brother?" Skye blinked, as did Cal (though neither of them could see each other, the family similarities between father and daughter were quite obvious here).

"My big brother," Raina nodded. "Well, stepbrother if you want to get technical. Father liked her better, 'cause he was a boy, but he is still family." She paused. "We parted in a bad way, though, so I wonder why is he coming here. This probably won't be good. It will be big-"

"A plane is landing!" someone yelled from the main square-slash-Li Shi's impromptu airport, and the trio went to look. Sure enough, a plane was there, and Grant Ward of all people emerged from it, looking...very worried, miserable even, but still very Grant-Ward-like here.

"Told you he was coming," Raina told Cal (and Skye) as she mosied to the front of the crowd. "Hey, bro-bro," she told the big man in an almost sucking-up style. "Why are you here?"

Grant gave Raina a good look. "Did you catch your dream?" he asked the InHuman woman in reply.

"Maybe," Raina's own face was carefully blank. "Why are you here?"

"I got two sick women in the plane, and I would like you to cure them," Grant gave Raina a careful, measured look. "Maybe you can ask Cal to stop trying to blend in with the environment and give you a hand? Because the way that life seems to be going? This might be Rhiannon's Spartan virus-"

"What? Impossible! Rhiannon was off this project for years..." Cal trailed away as Grant met his gaze. "Ok, Raina?"

"Cal?" Raina yelled from inside the aircraft (she snuck in unobserved while the others were observing his interactions with Grant), "you must get in here. I'm afraid that this is the whole White Horse problem-"

"What?" Cal looked clearly startled; he got up and promptly went inside.

"Um, shouldn't it be the _Pale_ Horse?" someone unknown asked from the crowd.

"Yeah," Raina looked out of the plane. "The Pale Horse is ridden by the Grim Reaper, period. The rider on the White Horse is Pestilence - '...and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer', see?"

"And this is Rhiannon's creation?" Jiaying said quietly.

"Looks like it," Raina nodded as she turned to get back in. "Bro-bro, we're going to cure these women, yeah-"

"They were going quite badly when I was landing here-"

"But we know here that this is going to be something wider scale than just a couple of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents-"

"Oh God!" Skye blanched. "May! D.C.! Others! Gordon-"

"Um," Gordon, who had been sizing Grant up all this time (and not liking what he was seeing) turned to Skye's mother. "JIaying-"

"Yes, go please and see how they are doing. Then come back," the elder Zabo woman told the eyeless teleporter, who promptly vanished.

"Thank you," Skye told her mother, before sagging - slightly. "Now, what is going on? Who is Rhiannon? What has she done? I mean - what's the virus is doing-"

"Rhiannon is your father's sister - elder sister," Jiaying said with a grimace. "We- she and I- we don't like each other very much for...various reasons. She works, or worked, with - Hydra."

"But mother, Hydra hurt you, father put you together," Skye began as something clicked in her head and she stopped. "Oh. This is why you two don't like each other?"

Jiaying was quiet for a long time. "It's more complex than that," she told her daughter.

Something in her gaze reminded Skye of Grant, when he revealed himself - sort of - as a Hydra agent... "You're Hydra," she whispered quietly, "you're Nazi-"

"Daisy-"

"Hydra isn't Nazi death cult," Grant startled the two women by speaking up. "It is a part of a conscious alien effort to take over the Earth. AIM and the Secret Empire are the other two." He paused. "Only it doesn't matter, does it? The end result is still the same."

"Aliens. Want to take over Earth. They're using Nazis-" Skye blinked, but Jiaying interrupted her:

"My dear, you must understand. Humanity lives not just on Earth, but on other planets, in our systems. This planet is really the backwater for humans - humans are actually very powerful as far as space goes, able to stand up to the Kree and the like. This planet, this particular planet, is part of of the Asgardian territory - a realm called Midgard..." She paused. "It is perhaps the least powerful of the realms of the Asgardians, which is why various other aliens are trying to take over it, like now-"

"What about us?" Skye asked quietly.

Jiaying paused with her answer.

When Gordon teleported into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s HQ (temporary ones, located closer to Li Shi due to the previously on-going op), the scene there was chaotic. "Is this your doing?" Coulson asked the InHuman teleporter, ignoring the fact that the man was younger, taller and stronger than he was, plus he could teleport and all. "This, this plague-"

"How many?" Gordon asked quietly, 'causing Coulson to pause and to release him.

"Many," he told Gordon. "Most of Gonzales' crew for example; Leo Fitz-"

"What about the other scientist? Simmons, Daisy told us-" (Gordon didn't honestly know why he asked this question - he just did.)

"Jemma? Jemma is actually fine..." Coulson found himself growing thoughtful despite the severity of the situation S.H.I.E.L.D. had found itself in. "As are May and Mack,for example..."

"Excuse me," Gordon teleported back out as fast he teleported back in.

Several moments later Coulson's computer recieved an incoming message. "Yes?" he told the person on the other side, who just happened to be Raina, ('cause Cal didn't really want to talk to Coulson still - even at this moment).

"Hi," Raina said brightly - relatively so. "Can I speak to Simmons? I know how to cure this problem - well, me and Cal do-"

"Jemma!" Coulson's shout literally went through the base. "Raina's on the net - she knows how to cure this!"

Jemma's arrival in Coulson's quarters almost broke the speed of sound or something. "Yes?!" she yelled at Raina. "What is it?!"

"You'll need Coulson's stem cells for this," Raina told the Englishwoman. "Maybe one of the others, too..."

Before long the two scientists were quickly working together over the Net. Coulson wondered if he should leave them alone - it's not like he could contribute to the two of them. He wasn't stupid, but neither was he a scientific genius-

"Excuse me." Gordon was back, and this time he had brought JIaying with her. "We believe," she continued, talking to Coulson in a voice that was less confident than how she usually sounded, (and more reminiscent of Skye, actually), "that we have the way, the means of applying the cure onto a wide-area scale at one go. Maybe your aircraft can be rigged the right way to deploy it?"

"I think that we need to talk to Mack," Coulson looked thoughtful.

"Why? Is he healthy?"

"Yes, actually," Coulson was growing more like his old thoughtful self by the minute. "Why, what am I missing?"

Jiaying told him.

"Hey, Grant!" Kara greeted the man as the latter entered the plane, followed by Skye. "We're ok!" She paused, remembered that Bobbi still hadn't apologized to her, and toned down her good attitude a little. "What was that thing?"

"A Spartan virus, aimed at killing humans...without alien DNA," Grant replied, quietly. "Glad to hear that you're ok, too."

"Wait, what?" Kara blinked. "Humans without alien DNA? But that's...genocide?"

"Oh, and humans with alien DNA is fine?" Raina said acidly as she put away the tools. "But yes, you're right, agent - a while ago, few decades ago, an alien race called 'the grey' took over a Hydra scientists' cell, and the resulting merger has resulted in this nightmare of a day - and of the potential future."

"But we've survived! Bobbi and I survived! Maybe the others in the agency can survive? Maybe you can help?" Kara looked away from Raina to Grant. "Grant-"

"Raina has already talked to Simmons and the others; S.H.I.E.L.D. is already working on it at their end," Grant said patiently. "They're going to be ok."

"Besides, why do you care?" Bobbi added acidly. "You're with him now-"

"Well, yeah, but he was talking how S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to assign us a handler instead of brainwashing and we would still work with you from time to time," Kara shrugged. "After all, aside from the occassional poisonous bitch like you, the agency is stil a very good place to belong."

...If looks could kill, Bobbi and Kara would've killed each other right now, right away. "What am I missing?" Skye asked Grant (not that she cared, **cough** ).

"Complex story made simple? Bobbi sold out Kara to Hydra and then forgot to rescue her, or to have Coulson and the others rescue her after Kara got brainwashed," Grant replied. "So now that Kara's memories are coming back, she's naturally peeved."

"Well, can't she forgive Bobbi and move on..." Skye trailed away: there was something new in Grant's eyes, something not quite frightening, but getting there.

"Fascinating," Grant said in an almost emotionless voice. "How does this sort of thing work?"

Skye glanced to the side; Bobbi, Cal and Kara were carefully looking away from the two of them, while Raina's golden glare was kind of similar to the look Grant was giving her at the moment, and Lincoln...

"Are you fondling Kara?" she whirled at her new friend, yes, going for the distraction, but still... "What are you doing here, anyhow?"

"Firstly, I'm a medical nurse," Lincoln flushed, but stood his ground - sort of, "and second, um, the others are getting restless - we do have families and/or friends outside of Li Shi," he fiddled. "Daisy, if your mother's away, can you tell them to- can you put their minds at ease?"

Skye exhaled. "Ok. First, let's contact D.C. and see how he and Jiaying are getting along. Second-"

"We're back," Jiaying said simply, startling the others (who, admittedly, had good reasons to be distracted). "Cal, Daisy, you're with me...and Gordon."

Judging by the expression on Gordon's face, this was unexpected - but he complied anyhow. (Of course, he also seemed tired enough not to argue - but not not to care.)

"People of Li Shi!" Jiaying proclaimed a short while later, looking very inch as being in charge. "We believe that there are things that concern you? About the new epidemic, perhaps?"

There was a general sound of agreement, and not very friendly, either.

"Then you shouldn't worry - the people of S.H.I.E.L.D. agency are already out there, helping your family and friends and others, even as we speak."

There were some mixed murmurs - apparently, the local InHumans did not expect this turn of events.

"I know, we know," Jiaying continued, unshaken, "that this is a new thing for us, an unexpected one, and not exactly welcome. But S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are good people, and some of them are our people too - agent Ward?" she turned to Grant, who alongside Bobbi and Kara, Lincoln and Raina, was lurking more in the background than in the foreground, unlike Skye and Jiaying, for example. "Would you come forth?"

The look Grant gave Jiaying wasn't near the intensity that he had given Skye when the latter had carelessly mentioned 'forgiveness' and 'moving on' to him (not the best topics, under the circumstance), but it was close enough. Still, he obliged well enough in coming forth and looking at the elder Zabo woman with a closed, inquiring, but also polite gaze.

"Can you show us your powers?" Jiaying spoke again.

Grant obliged - small flames appeared on his hands long enough for everyone in the crowd to notice and to witness, and then they vanished.

"Thank you," Jiaying told him promptly, before turning back to the InHuman crowd with a grand declaration that as you can see, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are a mix of ordinary people and InHumans just as our community is, so we _can_ work with them, thank you very much, so don't worry and keep soldering on, we promise. This was met with not so much a standing ovation but something close enough, and Jiaying's plan had worked.

"So, what do you think?" Jiaying asked her daughter (and maybe the rest of her family) some time later, in private. "It worked, right?"

"Yes, mother," Skye said quietly, in a more subdued voice than the one that she usually used. "You were wonderful." She paused, wanted to add something else, decided against it, and kept mum.

"You don't know if you can do it when your time comes?" Jiaying said with a small smile. "Don't worry. You're my heir - not just literally, but through genetics too - this is part and parcel of you too. Just believe in yourself, and when the time comes, you will make a great leader yourself."

"Thanks," Skye nodded. Her initial andrenaline rush from seeing Grant again had worn off; the realization that he apparently wasn't exactly Hydra anymore didn't give her much peace of mind; and then-

"How did you know that he's gifted too?" she asked instead.

"If he hadn't been, he'd be sick too," Jiaying replied. "The Spartan virus attacked people _without_ alien DNA, remember?"

"Sorry," Skye blinked. "I guess I just want this to be over, to know where we're going from here-"

"This goes for all of us," JIaying confessed. "We all had our plans, and now they're gone."

"They are?" Kara spoke up. "No offence, but my and Grant's plans, for example, about a small house-"

Grant gave Kara a particular look and said something to her in Spanish. Kara flushed and the two began to have an animated discussion - still in Spanish.

"I didn't know that she could be, or is, so fluent in Spanish," Bobbi told the next person to her; unfortunately, it was Raina, who shrugged and said: "Looks like I will be acquiring another elder sibling now."

There was a pause as everyone fell silent and stared at the green-skinned InHuman, who just sat there with her mouth gaping open and her eyes just as wide - for a moment, before doing her best to act as a porcupine did (or a hedgehog, or a spiny anteater) - by curling into a ball.

"That's Raina for you," Grant said wryly. "Always seeking the spotlight, never knowing what to do with it when she got it-"

"Another sibling, hah?" Kara interrupted him, looking thoughtful, but also - like she did before she got sick, in a rather submissive sort of way. "That sounds nice - being an only child sucks. The fact that my mother- you know about my mother-"

"We'll figure out the paperwork...eventually..." Grant looked thoughtful. "Speaking of figuring out... Gordon, right? What are the two of you up to - by the 'two of you' I meant you and Raina. I don't need to rip out your legs, right?"

"Of course not!" Gordon said quickly; "there is nothing between me and Raina at all to begin with."

"Do you want there to be?" Raina unrolled very quickly, here. "Thanks to actions of Rhiannon and her masters the old future is gone, we all can have a chance here - maybe a change too."

"We _have_ to change," Jiaying commented mildly, (but the others weren't really buying it). "Or else we'll die out, as the mammoths and the woolly rhinos did."

There was another pause, broken only by Bobbi working on one of Li Shi's tablets (they weren't _that_ traditional, thank you very much) in regards to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new (well relatively so) database. It was then when director Coulson made his appearance.

"We need to talk," he said.

 _TBC_


	2. Chapter 2

**White Horse (part 2)**

 _Disclaimer: see previous chapters._

...Phil Coulson was an intelligent man - he knew that Hydra wasn't beaten by far regardless of the defeats that both his agents (including himself, in the Arctic) and the Avengers had inflcted upon them. He knew that since their failed coming into the light (it'd failed, right?), Hydra had been mostly on the defensive, especially since Whitehall and von Strucker had died, and List had vanished, so this meant that they were winning, right?

Apparently wrong, as the new mass epidemic, (triggered by artificial means, to add insult to injury), has shown. Hydra didn't care much for people, to be sure, but considering that the newly-released epidemic seemed to be targetting potential Hydra agents as well as the innocents...he had clearly underestimated them. Yes, Hydra wanted to take over the Earth; yes, Hydra had risen in Nazi Germany, which was infamous for its own genocides; but somehow Coulson had managed to underestimate them, thinking that Hydra could be defeated in his own lifetime - and almost paid the price.

Or not, as quite a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents actually seemed to be immune to the new disease, which was odd, at least until Gordon and Jiaying came over and explained everything to him. The explanation did make sense, in a bizarre sort of way, but did it bring relief? No. Rather, it gave Coulson a realization that his world was ending around him, even if he himself didn't die...actually, he didn't catch even a sniffle in all of the mess...but still...

"Phil?" Melinda, his secod-in-command, his...friend, spoke up suddenly. "What are you thinking about?" She paused and added, catching Phil's glare. "I mean - more specifically."

"Melinda," Coulson was strangely laconic himself - usually he actually _liked_ to talk aloud. "Did you talk to Gordon or Jiaying or any of their people who came into contact with us in last 12 hours?"

May grew thoughtful. "...No," she confessed. "But communications _had_ been sketchy and we _did_ talk only regarding necessary info. What is going on?"

"Mel...the only people who didn't get sick right away were people _without_ any alien DNA - ordinary people, to be more precise. May...I didn't get sick because I already _did have_ alien DNA, thanks to Fury's revial of me. Fitz...or Gonzales...they didn't get have alien DNA...this is why they got ill until Jemma had cured them... May, you didn't. When did you get alien DNA? Is it because of Fury, Hydra, aliens or something else? I'm pretty sure that Mack got his back in Puerto Rico - the alien temple, remember? And you?"

May grew silent, even for her, until she broke it. "It's an old story," she finally told him. "It's over 6 years ago, when S.H.I.E.L.D. and WSC were doing a joint operation in India and beyond. I was among the agents who had been offered a program to re-discover their roots. Some refused it - I don't know what happened to them; given that the offer was strictly voluntary, probably nothing; I, and a few others, accepted it, and - got our DNA reconfigurated, among other things. I am some sort of a surrogate alien, put otherwise-"

It was then that their jet landed in Li Shi. "Let's go and talk to Jiaying and her family," Coulson said simply.

/

...After today's events, Coulson honestly didn't know what to expect from the InHuman society in question; at best of times, Jiaying seemed oddly reticient to cooperation; her appearance in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s (temporary) HQ with genuine help (and Gordon) had certainly been unexpected; rather, Coulson expected to her to be somehow involved with the plague; but her help had been real, so - now what? The world had changed, again, and S.H.I.E.L.D. once more was not on top of things.

Coulson did want cooperation, but honestly, he expected S.H.I.E.L.D. to be on a more superior ground, and now-

Now, when he, followed by May, entered the 'conference room' of Li Shi, the others, assembled there, were waiting for him, cautiously, warily even.

"What did I miss?" he spoke, acting on autopilot.

"Um, apparently when someone tickles your belly you make funny sounds with your nose?" agent 33 replied with what he _hadn't_ expected.

There was a pause, which Phil finally broke. "I don't," he said in an oddly defensive voice, "plus I _am_ the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. My belly isn't for tickling."

"What he said," May said with an odd look upon her face, "and he doesn't. He makes funny sounds when he's having sex-"

"May!" Coulson sputtered. "WTF?"

"Great," Grant said wryly. "Raina had been going about how he is perfectly proportioned for a while, which means that she had set her cap at marrying him - and did I mention, sir, that she is still a virgin?"

Coulson just stared. "Just ignore him," agent 33 said helpfully. "We've been just trying to figure out where Raina and Gordon over there stand in regards to each other, so yeah, we're off kilter here."

"Joy," Coulson muttered crossly, "but, seriously-"

"Seriously, we've been waiting for you," Jiaying said simply. "You people are the outgoing ones with ideas, remember? We're the more introvert ones, in this relationship-"

"You still want it?" Coulson asked simply. "You were reluctant in the beginning, and now, I confess, most of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s power base has been shaken up - again. Honestly, we can guarantee and promise less than what we could before this."

"We can live with that; we need allies with access to the greater world," Jiaying admitted, (not looking very happy about this revelation), "and have you thought that equal footing sometimes is a good thing?"

Coulson looked askance. "This is something of a tricky issue for us, yes." He asked in his own turn: "Any idea who - in Hydra or otherwise - is behind this?"

"Yes," Cal spoke up, as he produced a relatively reasonable sketch of a woman of approximately his age, and clearly related to him (and Skye). "This...is my sister, Daisy's aunt, Rhiannon Zabo. We...hadn't talked in a long while, not since she had sold out my wife to Whitehall, but when we had been in contact...she had been working on something like this Spartan virus...for this man..."

Another sketch, this time of a complete stranger, (something, considering that Coulson was the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., wasn't easy to achieve), older than Coulson or Cal, with a cigarette in his hand. "This man," Cal repeated, with a grimace. "Never knew his name; had manners like someone out of a Nabokov novel - a bad one. A cigarette addict if I ever saw one, too."

"And he, and your - sister, did this?" Coulson said incredulously. "How?"

"Ever had a pox shot, or something similar, when you were younger, say - in the 1990s?" Bobbi spoke up, having apparently given this some thought at least. "Want to bet that some of them had been - different?"

Coulson nodded - this did make sense; Hydra _had_ infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.; it could've infiltrated the American government too - and easily enough, most likely. And considering that doctoring the paperwork so that the pox shots were different, or the people who gave them to the patients were different, wasn't that hard, this scenario was quite realistic and feasable...

"But why?" Coulson muttered, mostly to himself. "Genocide - ok; Hydra are more Nazi-like than we've recognized, but-"

"One more thing," Raina added quietly, "in my last vision I've seen rows upon rows of stereotypical grey aliens, whom agent Bobbi Morse over there identified as the Fraal - whatever this means."

"It means," Coulson said simply, "that they are the aliens that Thor told S.H.I.E.L.D. about - before the battle of New York and all - as being allies and vassals of the Asgardians. If they're involved with Hydra-"

"Sir, unlike S.H.I.E.L.D., which has something like a vertical of power and authority, Hydra doesn't," Grant spoke up properly for the first time since Coulson and May came here. "Odds are that most of Hydra never knew what Rhiannon Zabo and her superiors were up to. Apparently, the grey aliens have their own differences in agendas too."

"Maybe," Coulson nodded, also thinking this over. "I, we really must talk to lady Sif once more..." he paused, as several people approached the conference room, "and also, unless I'm wrong, here are two people - Fox Mulder, and Dana Scully, who should be able to help us-"

He was wrong.

 _TBC_


End file.
